Demo 1 Hello Box?

I am assuming you have VRMLpad and would like to try it
out. Open it up. You will see a 'new untitled document'
with:

#VRML V2.0 utf8

As the first line. (You can write this in any text editor.
Save it as demo001.wrl and send it to notepad to edit it.)
EVERY vrml page/document MUST have EXACTLY that line
at the VERY top. ALWAYS. Or it won't work. Ever. And
the capital letters and small letters can't even be
changed as it is 'case sensitive'. But from after that
line, you can type a "#" and it is a 'comment' till the
end of the line. This could be your next line, a line
which does absolutely nothing by the way:

#first program: demo001.wrl

VRML uses 'nodes'. That is what they call them, and
they are like electronic circuits. They can be connected.
Reused. Named. They can take in some data. They can
put out some data. They 'do stuff'. Nodes can contain
other nodes, thus called parent and child to each other.
Here is the way you can make sure the user's headlight
is turned on:

NavigationInfo {headlight TRUE }

That was the NavigationInfo node, and in the curly
braces the headlight was set to TRUE to make up for
not having any lights in this scene. Next you need
a shape node which also has a pair of curly braces
and some stuff in them. In shape nodes you need to
have a geometry and appearance nodes both. In the
Appearance node is the material node and it is empty
just like the Box. (Nothing is in the curly braces
so it is the default size box and the default color
of material. Notice the use of upper and lower case
letters, they must be exactly as below:

And that is all you need to make a box in VRML. Save it
as demo001.wrl and then find it and click to open
it in explorer, (or dragging it into explorer works too.)
Here is the complete demo001.wrl file.

Demo 2 The Box Again!

VRML has only a few built in shapes: Box, Cone, Cylinder,
Sphere, IndexedFaceSet etc. (VRML pad will help you write
code. RIGHT CLICK and a menu will pop up with the items
to choose which you can use. Do it with the cursor positioned
in the middle of braces and you get choices to put there.
Also try ctrl space to complete.)
Highlight the word 'Material' and right click and choose
'edit Material' and a window comes up to let you pick out
colors. This will fill in several things at once, all inside
the Material node. Colors are represented with three numbers
for Red Green and Blue with one (1) being the most and
zero being no color. Lime green is: 0 1 0, black is: 0 0 0,
yellow is: 1 1 0, white is 1 1 1, gray is: .5 .5 .5 (all the
same, like black and white are all the same!)
The X-axis goes to the right,
the Y-axis is up,
the Z-axis is coming toward you with minus-Z going away
toward the horizon line in front of you.
Angles are all in radians (2 times pi is all the way
around so half way is 3.141 radians and what you call
90 degrees is written simply as 1.57 radians, but you
don't need the word 'radians' just the number.) The
angles are measured using the 'right hand thumb rule';
'with the thumb pointing along the axis, the fingers curl
and point in the direction of spin. Minus goes the other
way.) Angles also need to say which axis to turn on so
they actually are four numbers in one (4-vectors.) The
first is X the next is Y the third is Z and the fourth
is the actual angle. Make the axis you want to spin on
a one (1) and the other two zeros. This would turn about
90-degrees: 0 1 0 1.57
So this would be 30-degrees:

rotation 0 1 0 0.52

To do this to your Box, we need to add another node
which encloses everything we have in Shape. Shape
will be a child of this new transform node and the
final code should look like:

Demo 3 Two Blue Boxes

Notice how I indent? It helps keep things straight to
indent like you were writing an outline.
If you experiment, change the version number whenever you
start a new experiment, so you always have some working versions.
I save-as with a new number every time I get things working,
and start doing the next experiment with this new number.
Keep changes very small and then save, and check the parsed
output in explorer. Repeat many times. Version all which
work and start on the next experiment.
Right click to see the possibilities and then select and enter.
Remember to put the mouse in the braces and do it too!
Most errors will be due to the braces not being right so
watch where they start and stop. You can name something
and use it again, with a transform to make sure it is not
on top of something else. Here is a more complete
example with a bit of color added too:

Demo 4 Cones And Cylinders And Spheres, Oh My!

Well I hope that gives you a start. I received a
letter today from a student in Indonesia and
am sending a copy of this to her so she can get
a start on building a virtual hospital tour.
Boxes make great walls, floors, ceilings, you
just need to size them and color them right.
A lot of the furniture and fixtures etc.
can be made from just a few simple lines of code
like 4 cylinders for a table legs and a (flat, and
transparent) box for the glass table top. Change it
just a little and you have a counter or bookshelf.
Add a small sphere on the ends of the legs or use
cones instead of cylinders to add variations. Make
them different colors and sizes. THINK IN METERS! A
one (1) means one meter. Sure you can scale to any
size, but try to think this way and you will be
closer to correct dimensions to start with and the
scaling will not be so severe.
Spend a half hour a day writing code.
Practice writing some code most every day or
you will find your programming skills getting weaker
instead of stronger. A website is a good project,
but more, it will give you a place to try out the
new code you write. A place to put your work, be it
art, music, prose, stories, or virtual worlds and
objects.
In this next example, we create several objects.
We name them using "DEF" "boxthing01", and "conething01", and
"spherething01", and "cylinderthing01", and then later
use them later by calling them with "USE".
Note the the "DEF" preceeds the name of the node
and is then followed by the node, (in this case, the "Shape" node.)
I have also filled in much more concerning the material.
The colors are all coded as three numbers between 0 and 1
and are in the order: Red Green Blue. You can try experiment
with different values. "AmbientIntensity" and "transparancy" also
need to be between 0 and 1. This material is more complex
than most need to be. You can also add "shininess" if
you wish.
I have done things just a bit different at the end
where I have the cylinderthing01. Notice that the clones are
included as children within the same transform as cylinderthing01
itself. They can then be all positioned/moved by this single
transform. Within the "Transform" node we are allowed
to perform rotation, translation, and to scale the children all
together. Our box is a cube by default but we have elected to
create some of the other objects to a certain size, The height
and radius do not have to be included if you wish to use
their default values.

Demo 5 Clickable Link

In this next example, we add in some information
about the file itself. We do this using the use
of the WorldInfo node. This node provides us a place
to store this type of information with less fear of
it automatically being removed as in the case of comment
lines. Comments are often removed by software used
to compress VRML files. Saving an uncompressed version
may be a good idea if the work is still in progress and
you do not wish to have them removed. We also turn off
the headlight in this one and allow all types of navigation.
With the headlight off, it is important to include a
source of light. This is done through the PointLight
node. Its location and color are included here.
At the end, we use the Anchor node. This works like
any anchor in HTML. When the user clicks on the object
(here, a copy of the cylinderthing01) the browser will
jump to the new location. This link could be anything, and
other world files are not the only file type allowed by
any means.

Demo 6 ViewPoints And Background

This next example illustrates a few more nodes.
"WorldInfo" gives us a way of including
information about the world. "NavigationInfo"
includes "type" here which can be used to
limit how visitors can navigate. The four choises are
all included here, but should you wish to limit you
world to perhaps just one, delete the others especially
"ANY". These are case sensitive like all VRML.
A "Viewpoint" node is shown next which has
a "descrioption" in quotes and a position.
It can contain other information such as "orientation"
shown in the third viewpoint.
"Background" is found next in the code and I
want you to note that it is made up of two parts the
sky and the ground. The angle parts control the proportions
of the sky or ground spheres, and these are followed by
the color part which calls out the color. Note the
relation between these. I have three angles and three
colors each. They should match in number although the
sky and gound can be different from each other. You
should have a color for each angle.
"Pointlight" lets us add some lighting. Note
that we turned the headlight off at the top.

Demo 7 JavaScript Version Of Demo 3, Two Blue Boxes

In this next example we use the Script node
to essentialy create the same scene as in
demo003.wrl. Browser.createVrmlFromString is
used to create the VRML from the string. Note
that in the string itself is all the code used
in demo003.wrl, and that the continued lines all
begin with a single quote. Four variables are also
created in the JavaScript and include to demonstrate
how they are both created and later used (note the
variables rx, ry, rz, and ra which become the values
used for the rotation.) For those of you who do not
know JavaScript, I suggest learning it seperately
before trying to use it as it is distinct scripting
language and not an actual part of VRML. But for those
who know JavaScript, the following example should get
you started.

As you may have noted, we could have
included the data (supplied by the variables,)
for the rotation, directly into the string.
Also the numeric data for the colors and
translation could have been created by a
varaiable. This gives us the mathematical processing
capability of JavaScript (which is lacking in VRML.)
If you need to do some calculating, this is
the way to do it.

Demo 8 Extrusion and LOD

When viewing this example, move in closer to the cylinder,
and watch what happens to it. Now move away again.
In this next example, The LOD (Level Of Detail) node
is used to select between the cylinder node
used to draw an object when further away, and
extrusion node to show greater detail up close.
We have set the range at which this changes to 70.
For the extrusion, a rectangular area is swept through
a circle. The spine contains a series of points representing
points along a circle through which that 30 meter tall
rectange is swept. Note also the use of a more complex rotation
in the transform node enclosing this all. To quickly resolve
several sequential rotations into a single rotation, You may
find Dizzy from Vapourtech quite useful.

That was a relatively simple example of the use of
both LOD and extrusion nodes. The crossSection here
contains only four unique points. Changing the
crossSection points to represent a circle of points
will result in a torus (or donut) shape. This extrusion
node is very flexable and can create a variety of
shapes.
Here are all of the examples from above.
You can save them by right clicking and then
"Save Target As" etc. They do not
require additional resources. Also note that it is
correct to compress these files, but I have not
compressed these so that they may be readily
viewed in a text program without confusion. If you
save them using a VRML editor you may elect to
compress them at that time.
demo001.wrldemo002.wrldemo003.wrldemo004.wrldemo005.wrldemo006.wrldemo007.wrldemo008.wrl